All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1985, 1987, 1990, 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
By using this file, you agree to the terms and conditions set
forth in the LICENSE file which can be found at the top level of
the sendmail distribution.
$Id: vacation.1,v 8.26 2001/11/21 04:21:35 gshapiro Exp $
which would send messages to you (assuming your login name was eric) and reply to any messages for ``eric'' or ``allman''.
Available options:
-a " alias" Handle messages for alias in the same manner as those received for the user's login name.
-C " cfpath" Specify pathname of the sendmail configuration file. This option is ignored if -U is specified. This option defaults to the standard sendmail configuration file, located at /etc/mail/sendmail.cf on most systems.
-d Send error/debug messages to stdout instead of syslog. Otherwise, fatal errors, such as calling vacation with incorrect arguments, or with non-existent login s, are logged in the system log file, using syslog(8).
-f " filename" Use filename as name of the database instead of ~/.vacation.db or ~/.vacation.{dir,pag} . Unless the filename starts with / it is relative to ~.
-i Initialize the vacation database files. It should be used before you modify your .forward file.
-I Same as -i (for backwards compatibility).
-m " filename" Use filename as name of the file containing the message to send instead of ~/.vacation.msg . Unless the filename starts with / it is relative to ~.
-l List the content of the vacation database file including the address and the associated time of the last auto-response to that address.
-r " interval" Set the reply interval to interval days. The default is one week. An interval of ``0'' or ``infinite'' (actually, any non-numeric character) will never send more than one reply.
-s " address" Use address instead of the incoming message sender address on the From line as the recipient for the vacation message.
-t " time" Ignored, available only for compatibility with Sun's vacation program.
-U Do not attempt to lookup login in the password file. The -f and -m options must be used to specify the database and message file since there is no home directory for the default settings for these options.
-x reads an exclusion list from stdin (one address per line). Mails coming from an address in this exclusion list won't get a reply by vacation . It is possible to exclude complete domains by specifying ``@domain'' as element of the exclusion list.
-z Set the sender of the vacation message to ``<>'' instead of the user. This probably violates the RFCs since vacation messages are not required by a standards-track RFC to have a null reverse-path.
No message will be sent unless login (or an alias supplied using the -a option) is part of either the ``To:'' or ``Cc:'' headers of the mail. No messages from ``???-REQUEST'', ``???-RELAY'', ``???-OWNER'', ``OWNER-???'', ``Postmaster'', ``UUCP'', ``MAILER'', or ``MAILER-DAEMON'' will be replied to (where these strings are case insensitive) nor is a notification sent if a ``Precedence: bulk'' or ``Precedence: junk'' line is included in the mail headers. The people who have sent you messages are maintained as a db(3) or dbm(3) database in the file .vacation.db or .vacation.{dir,pag} in your home directory.
Vacation expects a file .vacation.msg , in your home directory, containing a message to be sent back to each sender. It should be an entire message (including headers). For example, it might contain:
From: eric@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Eric Allman) Subject: I am on vacation Delivered-By-The-Graces-Of: The Vacation program Precedence: bulk I am on vacation until July 22. If you have something urgent, please contact Keith Bostic <bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU>. --eric
Vacation reads the first line from the standard input for a UNIX ``From'' line to determine the sender. Sendmail(8) includes this ``From'' line automatically.
1.8i ~/.vacation.db default database file for db(3)
1.8i ~/.vacation.{dir,pag} default database file for dbm(3)
~/.vacation.msg default message to send